Your Failures Are More Important Than Your Successes

“I don’t look at résumés at all. Because they absolutely don’t tell me how somebody’s going to work for me. How many times have you been set up with someone on a date, who seems great and wonderful, but there’s no chemistry whatsoever? And that’s exactly how I feel about résumés. I really work from the gut. I’m impulsive.

“I will try to find out what kind of life you’ve had, where you’ve come from, what challenges you’ve had to overcome. I really don’t care about your successes as much as I care about your failures, and what you learned from them, and how you did that.

“I would say that I can tell within the first five minutes whether they’re going to fit into this environment. And by then I’ve already felt the energy — the way they come into my office, the way they shake my hand, the way they sit down, the way they’re easy with the conversation. … To me, the willingness to be open takes a lot of courage, because you’re displaying your vulnerability. I find that if you’re willing to be open, to expose your vulnerability, you’re going to succeed with me.”

Aimee Groth joined The Business Insider from Thomson Reuters in Minneapolis, where she was an associate editor for one of its legal magazines. Previously she worked for Minnesota Law & Politics magazine. She lives in Brooklyn, and you can see her dodging tourists while running over the Brooklyn Bridge most weekends.